


not with a bang but a whimper

by bebitched



Category: Lost
Genre: Assassins & Hitmen, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-21
Updated: 2013-02-21
Packaged: 2017-12-03 04:11:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/693963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bebitched/pseuds/bebitched
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>au. "we're assasins jarrah."</p>
            </blockquote>





	not with a bang but a whimper

 

*

 

 

 

 

Their eyes meet across a train station platform, like out of a grainy, black and white movie where the soundtrack is mysterious and romantic and the men are all in trench coats. 

 

But she’s not a damsel. The weight of a .9mm in her purse sees to that. 

 

There’s a nod of acknowledgement, a subtle exchange missed by the crowd, and then the train whips past. By the time it chugs away from the station again, she’s gone. 

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

There’s a bar with mirrors along the back wall and mahogany table tops and the melancholy notes of a piano slightly off-key drifting through the smoky air. 

 

“I’m beginning to think you’re following me,” he states amiably, but there’s the undercurrent of a warning in his voice that signals danger in red, flashing lights. He’s not exactly new to this. 

 

“That’s probably exactly how you want it to seem.”

 

She’s no novice herself.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

The street lights outside soak the hotel room in yellow, dingy illumination. Everything it touches appears dirty, singed. Like an oven light. 

 

His hand smoothes careful and slow over the bare, tanned skin of her hip, like rolling sand dunes in the landscape of the desert. 

 

Sayid’s eyes look jaundiced in the light. 

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

They don’t speak about husbands that sit at the bottom of the ocean or wives that lay in coffins; not of a past they try to forget or of a pacific island that nearly swallowed them once. 

 

It would almost be like they had never met, if they didn’t know the origin of all each other’s scars. 

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

“Does she trust you?”

 

It sounds odd, somehow, that question. Backwards. The slightest taste of betrayal taunts the tip of his tongue, almost drives him to say _no_. I don’t want to do this. The enemy of my friend is just some old man I’ve never met. Interwoven alliances like this start world wars. 

 

But he doesn’t. 

 

Ben raises his eyebrows expectantly. 

 

“Undoubtedly.”

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

She begins to wonder when the world got so hopeless, so bleak. If the sun rose on a blanched cityscape, sudden and terrible and nearly unnoticeable, or if the color leeched away by increments, by tiny drips of pigment. She tries to think of the last time she didn’t feel tired in a deep-set, skeletal way that no amount of sleep could cure. 

 

Had she always felt like this? 

 

But she pulls away blank, the faintest light of some sunny memory tiny and plastic like a doll house in the corner of her memory.

 

But all that’s left is the red; none of it ever really matters. 

 

It’s just business. 

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

She’s asleep on her stomach, back bare and gold sheet slung around her waist. 

 

He’s going to regret this, he realizes, like a premonition. Only this isn’t one of tarot cards or tea leaves. It’s one of conscience. One of the heart. The glass of water he’d sipped beside her settles uneasily in his stomach, grips his abdomen from the inside, like it’s trying to claw at his chest but can’t quite reach. 

 

He grabs for the glock in his bag, the silencer already attached. 

 

Nothing personal. It’s just a job. You’re responsible for who you work for. 

 

He raises the gun and fires three shots. 

 

Nothing. No scream. No blood. No bullet holes. 

 

“Blanks.”

 

She sits up slow, like a vampire from the crypt, and her eyes are hooded. Her gaze lands on his shocked face.

 

“Widmore sends his regards.”

 

“You knew.” And it’s not a question because of course she did. A part of him was always aware of that. 

 

The pain in his gut begins to expand, doubles in sharpness, and then he just… knows. His eyes meet hers.

 

“The water?”

 

Her answering smile in an enigma; sheepish but proud, apologetic but victorious. 

 

“Why?” It isn’t really a question that he expects an answer to, especially since he already has it. He’s _lived_ it before, he’s just usually on the other side. 

 

_Nothing personal. It’s just a job. You‘re responsible for who you work for._

 

He knees hit carpet, then his cheek. His breaths slow. His mouth tastes like pennies.

 

“We’re assassins, Jarrah. What did you expect?”

 

She watches as his pulse flutters like a dying butterfly with one wing torn, trying desperately to cling on, to keep going. And then she waits until he begins to go cold. She doesn’t make rookie mistakes. 

 

She warned him, once. 

 

She’s no novice. 

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

She releases his fake identification from the sixth floor balcony, watching as gravity claims it. After, the oddly-shaped shroud drops fast and heavy. The waves swallow him whole. 

 

 


End file.
